Monday, February 21, 2011

Welcome to "Tell Me About Your Movie"!

An awful lot of people dream about making movies. It certainly was a longtime dream of mine.

I made a short film in high school, in 1974, but that was about it for quite some time.

Flip the calendar pages all the way to 2004. That year, I began making short films under the banner "Castparty Productions."

Still, the big goal—making a feature-length film—remained unfulfilled for a few more years.

In 2008, my collaborators and I gave ourselves two weeks to conceive, write, shoot, and edit a feature film. We've since re-cut the movie, an art-film/thriller called The Observer.

We took a little more-patient approach with our second DIY feature, shooting it in the summer of 2009 and finishing post-production three days ago—on February 18, 2011. It's a slacker comedy called Inventory.

Along with starting to send DVDs to various film festivals to see if there's any love to be found there, I've been looking for film blogs that might be interested in publicizing such new, handmade works, without regard to their distribution status.

Most of the indie-film blogs I found fell into these categories:

News and opinion about movies that got into top-tier festivals, garnered award nominations, secured commercial distribution, etc.—many of the films containing famous or semi-famous talent

Advice on technique and marketing

Tips on lining up financing, distribution, etc.

One person's filmmaking odyssey

Any of these might be quite useful. But it seemed there might not be a place dedicated to commemorating the mere fact of giving birth to DIY films. A site to celebrate that, as Lloyd Kaufman would say, you made your own damn movie.

Think of "Tell Me About Your Movie" as the DIY filmmaker's equivalent of a site for knitters, where you post a picture of your sweater, discuss why and how you made it, what you learned, and whatever else you feel like saying about the journey and result.

You've done what so many dream about: making a feature film. Congratulations!

* * *

If you'd like me to post the story of making your film, please send a write-up about your project to justin@castparty.com

It doesn't matter whether your movie has been seen by no one but your mom, or if it made it into Cannes and theaters worldwide. It doesn't matter what format you shot it in. It doesn't matter what genre it is.

The important thing here is that you made a movie and want to tell people something about it and the experience of making it.

To be included, your movie needs:

To be completed, or at least in post-production

To be 45 minutes or longer

To have a trailer that we can embed in the post

Absolutely, feel free to talk about the business side, any laurels your film has earned, and so on.

But, except for the three requirements above, this isn't a "your film must be this tall to go on this ride" kind of site.